A Dance Movie Without a Lot of Moves

‘Musical Chairs,’ Directed by Susan Seidelman

Leah Pipes and EJ Bonilla in "Musical Chairs."Credit
John Clifford/Paladin

Tempting as it is to believe that no disability is insurmountable when you have a slavish Latin lover by your side, it will take a better film than “Musical Chairs” to convince us. Pairing Mia (Leah Pipes), an Upper East Side ballroom dancer, with Armando (E. J. Bonilla), a lithe Puerto Rican striver from the Bronx, this mawkish rom-com mines class, ethnic and ambulatory boundaries for cheap laughs and cheap-looking visuals.

Not that our lovers have to contend with anything that feels like a real obstacle. When a car accident leaves Mia unable to walk and forced to lower her romantic aspirations from the owner of her dance studio to its sometime janitor, Armando cheerfully abandons his cleaning to hoist her and her spirits. While his interfering old witch of a mother (Priscilla Lopez) performs spells to induce him to marry the perpetually wriggling Rosa (Angelic Zambrana), Armando decides that Mia’s blues can best be overcome by wheelchair ballroom dancing. If it means an unimpeded view of Armando’s flicking hips, I’m inclined to agree.

But as directed by Susan Seidelman (who peaked in the 1980s and has been on a long, slow slide ever since), “Musical Chairs” is surprisingly static fluff whose emotions feel less authentic than Madonna’s British accent. Rather than spotlight the fascinating pursuit of dancing on wheels, practiced by thousands and televised worldwide, Marty Madden’s screenplay rounds up a quirky posse of unfortunates — including an angry punk (Auti Angel) and a sassy transsexual (Laverne Cox) — and keeps them off the dance floor as long as possible. By the time the mirror ball finally spins, we have long since lost interest.